sct tui `experimental!`

Keyboard-driven terminal UI for exploring SNOMED CT interactively - no browser required.

Three panels: Hierarchy (top-left), Search / Results (bottom-left), Concept detail (right). Navigate entirely with the keyboard.

In the default build. sct tui ships in the released binaries and cargo install sct-rs (the tui feature is on by default). It is only absent from --no-default-features builds - see Installation.

Usage

sct tui [--db <PATH>]

Options

Flag	Default	Description
`--db <PATH>`	discovered (see Path resolution)	SQLite database produced by `sct sqlite`.

Example

# Open the TUI using the auto-discovered database
# (cwd → $SCT_DATA_HOME/data/ - see Path resolution)
sct tui

# Specify a database path explicitly
sct tui --db /data/snomed.db

# Use an environment variable
SCT_DB=/data/snomed.db sct tui

# After downloading a release with the pipeline, sct tui picks it up
# automatically from ~/.local/share/sct/data/
sct trud download --edition uk_monolith --pipeline
sct tui

Layout

┌─────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  HIERARCHY              │                                               │
│                         │           CONCEPT DETAIL                      │
│  ▶ Clinical finding     │                                               │
│    Procedure            │  Heart attack                                 │
│    Body structure       │  SCTID: 22298006                              │
│    ...                  │  FSN:   Myocardial infarction (disorder)      │
│                         │                                               │
├─────────────────────────│  Hierarchy                                    │
│  SEARCH                 │    Clinical finding > Ischemic heart disease  │
│ ┌─────────────────────┐ │                                               │
│ │ heart attack_       │ │  Synonyms                                     │
│ └─────────────────────┘ │    Cardiac infarction                         │
│  RESULTS (12)           │    MI - Myocardial infarction                 │
│                         │    Infarction of heart                        │
│  ▶ Heart attack [22298006]                                              │
│    Acute MI [57054005]  │  Attributes                                   │
│    ...                  │    finding_site: Entire heart [302509004]     │
│                         │    associated_morphology: Infarct [55641003]  │
└─────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Keyboard reference

Key	Action
`/`	Open search input (start typing immediately)
`Enter`	Confirm search / open selected concept
`Esc`	Cancel search input, return to results panel
`Tab`	Cycle focus: Hierarchy → Search/Results → Detail → Hierarchy
`←` / `→`	Move focus left / right
`↑` / `↓`	Move selection up / down in focused panel
`PgUp` / `PgDn`	Scroll detail panel
`b`	Back - return to previously viewed concept
`h`	Jump focus to Hierarchy panel
`s`	Toggle size estimates in the detail panel
`q` / `Q`	Quit
`Ctrl-C`	Quit

Workflow

Browse by hierarchy - focus the Hierarchy panel (press h), use ↑↓ to select a hierarchy category, press Enter to load its concepts into the Results list.
Search - press / to open the search input. Type a term and wait (150 ms debounce) or press Enter to search immediately. Results appear in the Results list ranked by FTS5 relevance.
Inspect a concept - use ↑↓ in the Results list, press Enter to load the full concept detail on the right.
Navigate relationships - the detail panel lists parents and attributes with their SCTIDs. Type the SCTID into the search box to jump to any related concept, or use b to navigate back through your history (up to 20 steps).
Inspect subtree size - press s in the detail panel to show the NDJSON and SQLite size estimates for the selected concept's subtree.

FTS5 query syntax

The search box accepts plain terms as well as FTS5 expressions:

Input	Behaviour
`diabetes`	Prefix match - finds `diabetes`, `diabetic`, etc.
`heart attack`	Exact phrase match
`"heart attack"`	Explicit phrase match
`diabetes* OR hypertension`	Boolean OR
`fsn:heart`	Field-scoped search - restrict to one FTS column (`id`, `preferred_term`, `synonyms`, `fsn`)

Installation

sct tui is part of the default tui Cargo feature, so it is present in the released binaries and in cargo install sct-rs. It adds ratatui and crossterm as dependencies. Only a --no-default-features build (such as the Docker server image) omits it:

# Server-only build without the terminal UI
cargo install --path sct --no-default-features --features serve

Prerequisites

Requires a SNOMED CT SQLite database. The simplest way to produce one is:

sct trud download --edition uk_monolith --pipeline

…which deposits a .db under ~/.local/share/sct/data/ that every read-side command (including sct tui) auto-discovers. See Path resolution for the full chain.

Alternatively, build one explicitly:

sct sqlite --ndjson snomed.ndjson --output snomed.db

sct tui experimental!